"America has two great dominant strands of political thought - conservatism,
which, at its very best, draws lines that should not be crossed;
and progressivism, which, at its very best, breaks down barriers that
should never have been erected."
-- Bill Clinton, Dedication of the Clinton Presidential Library, November 2004

Tuesday, July 22, 2003

The link is to an MSNBC story on Ambassador Joe Wilson, also a major topic on tonight's Hardball with Chris Matthews. I watch nearly every night, and tonight was, like, wow. Quite a jolt. Matthews was fairly anti-war pre-invasion, but since then he's flip-flopped. My guess? No more. There was a decisive and seemingly permanent shift in his attitude. Matthews is like a dog with a bone -- and yes, I mean more than usual -- on the 16 words and the State of the Union and the Case for War. This must be a GoodThing.(TM 2003 Annatopia.com)

Though I guess I saw it coming, it has never been as clear as it was tonight. The Andrea Mitchell report on the retaliation by the White House against Ambassador Wilson and his wife was quite a piece of reporting. Then, Chris Matthews just hammers Ralph Reed into a well-tanned bundle of twitching nerves. It was a joy to behold. Later, the debate with Howard Fineman, Dee Dee Myers, and Ed Rollins was pretty damaging punditry for Cheney.

These scandals get worse by the day, is Bush in freefall? I bet that Condoleeza is sure regretting the "16 words" meme right about now -- and that aircraft carrier landing is start to look the doomed folly of an arrogant king. It reminds of the painters Napoleon hired as official millitary campaign artists, who transformed mules into majestic white horses.

Once the transcript is up, I'll post some highlights, but you can watch (or record) the entire hour at 11:00 p.m. PDT / 2:00 a.m. EDT on MSNBC -- catch it if you can.

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About Nation-Building

Nation-Building was founded by Aziz Poonawalla in August 2002 under the name Dean Nation. Dean Nation was the very
first weblog devoted to a presidential candidate, Howard Dean, and became the vanguard of the Dean netroot phenomenon, raising
over $40,000 for the Dean campaign, pioneering the use of Meetup, and enjoying the attention of the campaign itself, with Joe Trippi
a regular reader (and sometime commentor). Howard Dean himself even left a comment once. Dean Nation was a group weblog effort and counts
among its alumni many of the progressive blogsphere's leading talent including Jerome Armstrong, Matthew Yglesias, and Ezra Klein. After
the election in 2004, the blog refocused onto the theme of "purple politics",
formally changing its name to Nation-Building in June 2006.
The primary focus of the blog is on articulating
purple-state policy at home and
pragmatic liberal interventionism abroad.